Yearly Archives: 2018

As I sat in my jail cell I had to question the admonition I got from an old-timer at AA meeting I frequented. “If you trust your Higher Power enough, you don’t need psych meds.” Really? How well did that work for me? Prior to my psychotic break I wore my sobriety well. I had…

Just a kid on her bike and her dad jogging alongside. “I want to learn how to shoot the basketball better,” she said. “We play it every day at P.E.”. She was seven. So off to the elementary school grounds we went. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon. Approaching the asphalt playground, she jumped off…

Mentally ill? For most of recorded history the treatment was barbaric. Labeled as witches, we were burned at the stake or weighted down and thrown into icy water. If we floated we were “guilty.” Fished out and sent to said burning stake. Sink to the bottom? Well then we were “innocent”… and dead. England saw…

So 12-step recovery suggests I find a God (or god) of my own understanding. That’s a hard enough task for your average alcoholic or addict. But when bipolar mania, coupled with psychosis, once had you convinced that you were God… of rather that more obscure member of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, that is some…

I’m taking a whiz in an inappropriate place again. Apparently five plus years of sobriety have done little to suppress “the world is my toilet” viewpoint that I subscribe to. Tonight it’s the side of a forest-green Waste Management Dumpster behind a Fry’s supermarket. The street sweeping company I drive for has sent me to…

Celia never seemed to put more than a few months together clean. A complete failure at recovery. Not worth the 24-hour, 30-day and occasional 60-day aluminum chips she was picking up with regularity. At least that’s what some thought. The short, short cutoff jeans. The barely-there blouses. For the healthy ones in the rooms, clothes…